It has been more than a week since StarCraft 2 Heart of the Swarm expansion was previewed around the world, although we didn’t get to see any new units for multiplayer but we have the privilege to check out what’s in the campaign for us. By now there are probably a berzillion articles of the campaign gameplay, but there no one wrote their thoughts of the campign lore yet. Entering food for thought.

Man that’s a lot of banelings…And the logo colour is purple!

HotS picks up after where Wings of Liberty (WoL) ended, from the teaser trailer we can see that Kerrigan is being hunted by Nova and some spectres in some Terran building (or possibly Raynor’s Hyperion) with Raynor finding her too.

And then from this video, we also learn after Kerrigan got blasted by the Xel Naga artifact she seems to have lost some of her memories, and also got weaken in the process. She looks like her former self at first but then change to her zerg self again after saying “I’ll kill all of you before I let that happen.” to her zerg advisor/memory of Queen of Blades, Izsha. Which brings up three questions.

1. Where the heck was Izsha in WoL?
2. So is Kerrigan “deinfested” or not?
3. Why does she need to unite the Swarm?

Well first thing first, Kerrigan doesn’t seem deinfested even after from the blast, I mean it won’t make sense if Kerrigan was back to her former self she would not even think of gathering back the Swarm again would she. Besides she doesn’t know that she herself is the key to stop the Xel Naga or Hybrids from destroying the universe, so looks like Valerian was wrong about the deinfestation theory (or maybe he knew, who knows?). But Kerrigan is still pretty much herself, except that she’s now wearing a ghost suit and more human.

And she looks like an African chick too.

On the other hand, the creation of Izsha seems a bit ironic. The Brood Mothers (advanced Queens) that she engineered to replace the Cerebrates from Brood War is understandable, but come on…does Kerrigan really need a zerg advisor? And Izsha looks like an infested adjutant and a medusa rip off from WarCraft (really creative Blizzard), but then again Kerrigan might have created her for “just in case” if she lost her memories (which she did), wait a minute…has Kerrigan already anticipated it and she wanted the artifact to detonate all along? Hence the creation of Izsha? So many questions unanswered...

Talking about new characters, Abathur is a new character introduced as the Zerg evolution master for the Swarm. According to the dialog from sc.legacy.com, Abathur serves Kerrigan and she doesn’t remember it him. Abathur was created by the late Overmind first, but after the Overmind died he went feral and buried himself deep within Char then was found by Kerrigan and serve her ever since. Which brings up another question…

Where the heck was he in SC1 AND WoL?

While the design and characteristic of Abathur is interesting, but in my opinion this somehow feels like a “meh”. This is because it does kind of messes up the lore in some ways, it felt like Blizzard is throwing in a scientist for the Swarm that is equivalent to Egon Stettman in Raynor’s Laboratory from WoL just for the sake of it. But anyway, Abathur being the evolution master means that he’s helping Kerrigan on the Swarm’s evolution upgrades as you play along the campaign. He also helps the Swarm’s evolution for some missions as well, such as not getting freeze during a flash freeze in Silent Their Cries mission (video below).

Kerrigan needs to collect Mutagens to improve the Swarm’s evolution state, it’s exactly the same as collecting credits, Protoss artifacts and Zerg DNA in WoL like Raynor did. The only difference is that you don’t buy units, but you improve the unit’s capabilities and will have two different class of the same unit for you to choose in the Zerg’s Evolution Chamber. My personal favourite is the Raptor, it’s one of the two zergling evolutions that jumps on their enemy food in the teaser trailer.

For more evolution infomation, click here.

There were two playable missions during the preview conference for invited players in Blizzard HQ, from the short story mode video above Kerrigan’s job now is to reclaim her throne as the Queen of blades again from her Queens that went separate ways, if you think about it it’s just like BW all over again. For those who did not play BW, the main story line was the Terran United Earth Directorate (UED), Cerebrates and Kerrigan tried to take control of the Swarm after the Overmind was obliterated, which Kerrigan succeeded and almost destroyed all three races completely (which she could if she wanted to). Again, that's some creative writing Blizzard...really creative.

With Kerrigan showing who’s the Queen B of the universe again, that also means you get to control her most of the time throughout the campaign. Blizzard is trying to incorporate some RPG elements in it which is cool, but the thought of having a ghost running around keeping her Swarm in order seems a bit weird, it would be much cooler if the model was the zerg outfit with those winged claws, but that’s something we won’t see since she’s “deinfested”.

HEADSHOT~!! LOL <3

Oh, did I mention you get to ride around in a badass Leviathan? Though it’s just like Raynor flying around in his Hyperion, but Kerrigan needs something to travel around the galaxy. The Leviathan won’t act like a Battlecruiser where you can go to a canteen and play the Vikings arcade game, it acts more like a massive transportation and building at the same time, since it has an Evolution Chamber inside it too. The pics below shows that you’re at the entrance of the Leviathan’s god-knows-what, different planets will show different backgrounds which is nice.

"When you're hot then you're cold~"
 

I have to say that the preview of HotS campaign is not that satisfying for me, as they only showed a little and what’s more the story is like BW all over again. It would have been better if they showed us some other stuff for multiplayer as well *cough*lurker*cough*, or other mods in the making like Blizzard DotA (seriously, CHANGE THAT TERRIBLEH NAME). If Blizzard does the same for Legacy of the Void, then there's no point of seperating SC2 into a trilogy in the first place and it really seems they're sucking our money (but we're also suckers for buying it). Until then, we have to wait for more SC2 lore news in Blizzcon October.